Immobile.
1/1
The room is a murky blur of gray, but I can tell it is expansive and elegant. All I can tell is that it is a dining hall, and all I can hear is the scrape of cutlery on china, the minute sound of teeth tearing through both vegetable and flesh and, oddly, a sound similar to that of a dripping faucet.
I’m eating opposite a man who I don’t recognize. He’s eating what looks like a raw steak, freshly cut, and my leg is itching. My leg is itching, and it’s not there, all that remains is a sloppily amputated thigh. I’m stricken by the knowledge that he’s not eating steak; he is eating my leg. There is nothing I can do about it; my body is immobile, and unresponsive. All I can possibly do is sit and eat; my hand is continually traveling from my plate to my otherwise immobile mouth, with no effort or consent from me. The man reaches forward and I do the same, grasping a thin-stemmed wine glass full of red wine. He lifts it and I mirror him, we face each other, and as he smiles, my blood leaks through his teeth and drips down his chin. I feel myself imitating him, my face contorting into a grin, despite the itch of blood running down the sliced flesh of my mutilated left leg. His teeth still tainted red with my blood, he mouths, ‘to us’ and toasts me with a simple tip of his glass, which I find myself mirroring helplessly. To my horror, he resumes eating, and I must continue to do the same, a prisoner of my own body. It seems to go on forever in the same monotony; it seems to go on for days. My alarm goes off and I awake, trembling slightly, disturbed by the reaches of my own mind.
While not explicitly terrifying, the dream leaves me thinking. Thinking that the days a nightmare could send me to sleep in my parents’ room are gone. That I may never again go back to sleep with the reassuring feeling of a parent lying on either side of me, sure that nothing and no one could possibly harm me.
“Tell me about it,” my mother used to say, “tell me everything and you will never have the dream again.” And I would, always hoping that she was correct and I would never be troubled by it again. It seemed to work, for the most part.
But tonight my mother is sleeping down the hall, and I’m too old to trouble her with the insignificant trivialities of a nightmare. After all, I’m sixteen now, nothing else is the same as it was when I was five, and I have to accept that this will never be either.
I think that once you reach a certain age, you have to accept some things, but I think the hardest is that when you’re older, your nightmares are only your own, and you have to learn to accept them.
I’m eating opposite a man who I don’t recognize. He’s eating what looks like a raw steak, freshly cut, and my leg is itching. My leg is itching, and it’s not there, all that remains is a sloppily amputated thigh. I’m stricken by the knowledge that he’s not eating steak; he is eating my leg. There is nothing I can do about it; my body is immobile, and unresponsive. All I can possibly do is sit and eat; my hand is continually traveling from my plate to my otherwise immobile mouth, with no effort or consent from me. The man reaches forward and I do the same, grasping a thin-stemmed wine glass full of red wine. He lifts it and I mirror him, we face each other, and as he smiles, my blood leaks through his teeth and drips down his chin. I feel myself imitating him, my face contorting into a grin, despite the itch of blood running down the sliced flesh of my mutilated left leg. His teeth still tainted red with my blood, he mouths, ‘to us’ and toasts me with a simple tip of his glass, which I find myself mirroring helplessly. To my horror, he resumes eating, and I must continue to do the same, a prisoner of my own body. It seems to go on forever in the same monotony; it seems to go on for days. My alarm goes off and I awake, trembling slightly, disturbed by the reaches of my own mind.
While not explicitly terrifying, the dream leaves me thinking. Thinking that the days a nightmare could send me to sleep in my parents’ room are gone. That I may never again go back to sleep with the reassuring feeling of a parent lying on either side of me, sure that nothing and no one could possibly harm me.
“Tell me about it,” my mother used to say, “tell me everything and you will never have the dream again.” And I would, always hoping that she was correct and I would never be troubled by it again. It seemed to work, for the most part.
But tonight my mother is sleeping down the hall, and I’m too old to trouble her with the insignificant trivialities of a nightmare. After all, I’m sixteen now, nothing else is the same as it was when I was five, and I have to accept that this will never be either.
I think that once you reach a certain age, you have to accept some things, but I think the hardest is that when you’re older, your nightmares are only your own, and you have to learn to accept them.